CHAPTER XII.. Of the Internal Causes Tending to the Dissolution

OF THE INTERNAL CAUSES TENDING TO THE DISSOLUTION OF ANY GOVERNMENT.

1. That the judging of good and evil belongs to private persons is a seditious opinion. 2. That subjects do sin by obeying their princes is a seditious opinion. 3. That tyrannicide is lawful is a seditious opinion. 4. That those who have the supreme power are subject to the civil laws is a seditious opinion. 5. That the supreme power may be divided is a seditious opinion. 6. That faith and sanctity are not acquired by study and reason, but always supernaturally infused and inspired, is a seditious opinion. 7. That each subject hath a propriety or absolute dominion of his own goods is a seditious opinion. 8. Not to understand the difference between the people and the multitude, prepares toward sedition. 9. Too great a tax of money, though never so just and necessary, prepares toward sedition. 10. Ambition disposeth us to sedition. 11. So doth the hope of success. 12. Eloquence alone without wisdom, is the only faculty needful to raise seditions. 13. How the folly of the common people, and the elocution of ambitious men, concur to the destruction of a common-weal.

1. Hitherto hath been spoken, by what causes and pacts commonweals are constituted, and what the rights of princes are over their subjects. Now we will briefly say somewhat concerning the causes which dissolve them, or the reasons of seditions. Now as in the motion of natural bodies three things are to be considered, namely, internal disposition, that they be susceptible of the motion to be produced; the external agent, whereby a certain and determined motion may in act be produced; and the action itself: so also in a commonweal where the subjects begin to raise tumults, three things present themselves to our regard; first, the doctrines and the passions contrary to peace, wherewith the minds of men are fitted and disposed; next, their quality and condition who solicit, assemble, and direct them, already thus disposed, to take up arms and quit their allegiance; lastly, the manner how this is done, or the faction itself. But one and the first which disposeth them to sedition, is this, that the knowledge of good and evil belongs to each single man. In the state of nature indeed, where every man lives by equal right, and has not by any mutual pacts submitted to the command of others, we have granted this to be true; nay, proved it in chap. I. art. 9. But in the civil state it is false. For it was shown (chap. VI. art. 9) that the civil laws were the rules of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest; that therefore what the legislator commands, must be held for good, and what he forbids for evil. And the legislator is ever that person who hath the supreme power in the commonweal, that is to say, the monarch in a monarchy. We have confirmed the same truth in chap. XI. art. 2, out of the words of Solomon. For if private men may pursue that as good and shun that as evil, which appears to them to be so, to what end serve those words of his: Give therefore unto thy servant an understanding heart, to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and evil? Since therefore it belongs to kings to discern between good and evil, wicked are those, though usual, sayings, that he only is a king who does righteously, and that kings must not be obeyed unless they command us just things; and many other such like. Before there was any government, just and unjust had no being, their nature only being relative to some command: and every action in its own nature is indifferent; that it becomes just or unjust, proceeds from the right of the magistrate. Legitimate kings therefore make the things they command just, by commanding them, and those which they forbid, unjust, by forbidding them. But private men, while they assume to themselves the knowledge of good and evil, desire to be even as kings; which cannot be with the safety of the commonweal. The most ancient of all God’s commands is, (Gen. ii. 17): Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: and the most ancient of all diabolical temptations, (Gen. iii. 5): Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil; and God’s expostulation with man, (verse 11): Who told thee that thou wert naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? As if he had said, how comest thou to judge that nakedness, wherein it seemed good to me to create thee, to be shameful, except thou have arrogated to thyself the knowledge of good and evil.

2. Whatsoever any man doth against his conscience, is a sin; for he who doth so, contemns the law. But we must distinguish. That is my sin indeed, which committing I do believe to be my sin; but what I believe to be another man’s sin, I may sometimes do that without any sin of mine. For if I be commanded to do that which is a sin in him who commands me, if I do it, and he that commands me be by right lord over me, I sin not. For if I wage war at the commandment of my prince, conceiving the war to be unjustly undertaken, I do not therefore do unjustly; but rather if I refuse to do it, arrogating to myself the knowledge of what is just and unjust, which pertains only to my prince. They who observe not this distinction, will fall into a necessity of sinning, as oft as anything is commanded them which either is, or seems to be unlawful to them: for if they obey, they sin against their conscience; and if they obey not, against right. If they sin against their conscience, they declare that they fear not the pains of the world to come; if they sin against right, they do, as much as in them lies, abolish human society and the civil life of the present world. Their opinion therefore who teach, that subjects sin when they obey their prince’s commands which to them seem unjust, is both erroneous, and to be reckoned among those which are contrary to civil obedience; and it depends upon that original error which we have observed above, in the foregoing article. For by our taking upon us to judge of good and evil, we are the occasion that as well our obedience, as disobedience, becomes sin unto us.

3. The third seditious doctrine springs from the same root, that tyrannicide is lawful; nay, at this day it is by many divines, and of old it was by all the philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and the rest of the maintainers of the Greek and Roman anarchies, held not only lawful, but even worthy of the greatest praise. And under the title of tyrants, they mean not only monarchs, but all those who bear the chief rule in any government whatsoever; for not Pisistratus only at Athens, but those Thirty also who succeeded him, and ruled together, were all called tyrants. But he whom men require to be put to death as being a tyrant, commands either by right or without right. If without right, he is an enemy, and by right to be put to death; but then this must not be called the killing a tyrant, but an enemy. If by right, then the divine interrogation takes place: Who hath told thee that he was a tyrant? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? For why dost thou call him a tyrant, whom God hath made a king, except that thou, being a private person, usurpest to thyself the knowledge of good and evil? But how pernicious this opinion is to all governments, but especially to that which is monarchical, we may hence discern; namely, that by it every king, whether good or ill, stands exposed to be condemned by the judgment, and slain by the hand of every murderous villain.

4. The fourth opinion adversary to civil society, is their’s who hold, that they who bear rule are subject also to the civil laws. Which hath been sufficiently proved before not to be true, in chap VI. art. 14, from this argument: that a city can neither be bound to itself, nor to any subject; not to itself, because no man can be obliged except it be to another; not to any subject, because the single wills of the subjects are contained in the will of the city; insomuch that if the city will be free from all such obligation, the subjects will so too; and by consequence she is so. But that which holds true in a city, that must be supposed to be true in a man, or an assembly of men who have the supreme authority; for they make a city, which hath no being but by their supreme power. Now that this opinion cannot consist with the very being of government, is evident from hence; that by it the knowledge of what is good and evil, that is to say, the definition of what is, and what is not against the laws, would return to each single person. Obedience therefore will cease, as oft as anything seems to be commanded contrary to the civil laws, and together with it all coercive jurisdiction; which cannot possibly be without the destruction of the very essence of government. Yet this error hath great props, Aristotle and others; who, by reason of human infirmity, suppose the supreme power to be committed with most security to the laws only. But they seem to have looked very shallowly into the nature of government, who thought that the constraining power, the interpretation of laws, and the making of laws, all which are powers necessarily belonging to government, should be left wholly to the laws themselves. Now although particular subjects may sometimes contend in judgment, and go to law with the supreme magistrate; yet this is only then, when the question is not what the magistrate may, but what by a certain rule he hath declared he would do. As, when by any law the judges sit upon the life of a subject, the question is not whether the magistrate could by his absolute right deprive him of his life; but whether by that law his will was that he should be deprived of it. But his will was, he should, if he brake the law; else his will was, he should not. This therefore, that a subject may have an action of law against his supreme magistrate, is not strength of argument sufficient to prove, that he is tied to his own laws. On the contrary, it is evident that he is not tied to his own laws; because no man is bound to himself. Laws therefore are set for Titius and Caius, not for the ruler. However, by the ambition of lawyers it is so ordered, that the laws to unskilful men seem not to depend on the authority of the magistrate, but their prudence.

5. In the fifth place, that the supreme authority may be divided, is a most fatal opinion to all commonweals. But diverse men divide it diverse ways. For some divide it, so as to grant a supremacy to the civil power in matters pertaining to peace and the benefits of this life; but in things concerning the salvation of the soul they transfer it on others. Now, because justice is of all things most necessary to salvation, it happens that subjects measuring justice, not as they ought, by the civil laws, but by the precepts and doctrines of them who, in regard of the magistrate, are either private men or strangers, through a superstitious fear dare not perform the obedience due to their princes; through fear falling into that which they most feared. Now what can be more pernicious to any state, than that men should, by the apprehension of everlasting torments, be deterred from obeying their princes, that is to say, the laws; or from being just? There are also some, who divide the supreme authority so as to allow the power of war and peace unto one whom they call a monarch; but the right of raising money they give to some others, and not to him. But because monies are the sinews of war and peace, they who thus divide the authority, do either really not divide it at all, but place it wholly in them in whose power the money is, but give the name of it to another: or if they do really divide it, they dissolve the government. For neither upon necessity can war be waged, nor can the public peace be preserved without money.

6. It is a common doctrine, that faith and holiness are not acquired by study and natural reason, but are always supernaturally infused and inspired into men. Which, if it were true, I understand not why we should be commanded to give an account of our faith; or why any man, who is truly a Christian, should not be a prophet; or lastly, why every man should not judge what is fit for him to do, what to avoid, rather out of his own inspiration, than by the precepts of his superiors or right reason. A return therefore must be made to the private knowledge of good and evil; which cannot be granted without the ruin of all governments. This opinion hath spread itself so largely through the whole Christian world, that the number of apostates from natural reason is almost become infinite. And it sprang from sick-brained men, who having gotten good store of holy words by frequent reading of the Scriptures, made such a connexion of them usually in their preaching, that their sermons, signifying just nothing, yet to unlearned men seemed most divine. For he whose nonsense appears to be a divine speech, must necessarily seem to be inspired from above.

7. The seventh doctrine opposite to government, is this; that each subject hath an absolute dominion over the goods he is in possession of: that is to say, such a propriety as excludes not only the right of all the rest of his fellow-subjects to the same goods, but also of the magistrate himself. Which is not true; for they who have a lord over them, have themselves no lordship, as hath been proved chap. viii. art. 5. Now the magistrate is lord of all his subjects, by the constitution of government. Before the yoke of civil society was undertaken, no man had any proper right; all things were common to all men. Tell me therefore, how gottest thou this propriety but from the magistrate? How got the magistrate it, but that every man transferred his right on him? And thou therefore hast also given up thy right to him. Thy dominion therefore, and propriety, is just so much as he will, and shall last so long as he pleases; even as in a family, each son hath such proper goods, and so long lasting, as seems good to the father. But the greatest part of men who profess civil prudence, reason otherwise. We are equal, say they, by nature; there is no reason why any man should by better right take my goods from me, than I his from him. We know that money sometimes is needful for the defence and maintenance of the public; but let them who require it, show us the present necessity, and they shall receive it. They who talk thus know not, that what they would have, is already done from the beginning, in the very constitution of government; and therefore speaking as in a dissolute multitude and yet not fashioned government, they destroy the frame.

8. In the last place, it is a great hindrance to civil government, especially monarchical, that men distinguish not enough between a people and a multitude. The people is somewhat that is one, having one will, and to whom one action may be attributed; none of these can properly be said of a multitude. The people rules in all governments. For even in monarchies the people commands; for the people wills by the will of one man; but the multitude are citizens, that is to say, subjects. In a democracy and aristocracy, the citizens are the multitude, but the court is the people. And in a monarchy, the subjects are the multitude, and (however it seem a paradox) the king is the people. The common sort of men, and others who little consider these truths, do always speak of a great number of men as of the people, that is to say, the city. They say, that the city hath rebelled against the king (which is impossible), and that the people will and nill what murmuring and discontented subjects would have or would not have; under pretence of the people stirring up the citizens against the city, that is to say, the multitude against the people. And these are almost all the opinions, wherewith subjects being tainted do easily tumult. And forasmuch as in all manner of government majesty is to be preserved by him or them, who have the supreme authority; the crimen læsæ majestatis naturally cleaves to these opinions.

9. There is nothing more afflicts the mind of man than poverty, or the want of those things which are necessary for the preservation of life and honour. And though there be no man but knows, that riches are gotten with industry, and kept by frugality, yet all the poor commonly lay the blame on the evil government, excusing their own sloth and luxury; as if their private goods forsooth were wasted by public exactions. But men must consider, that they who have no patrimony, must not only labour that they may live, but fight too that they may labour. Every one of the Jews, who in Esdras’ time built the walls of Jerusalem, did the work with one hand, and held the sword in the other. In all government, we must conceive that the hand which holds the sword, is the king or supreme council, which is no less to be sustained and nourished by the subjects’ care and industry, than that wherewith each man procures himself a private fortune; and that customs and tributes are nothing else but their reward who watch in arms for us, that the labours and endeavours of single men may not be molested by the incursion of enemies; and that their complaint, who impute their poverty to public persons, is not more just, than if they should say that they are become in want by paying of their debts. But the most part of men consider nothing of these things. For they suffer the same thing with them who have a disease they call an incubus; which springing from gluttony, it makes men believe they are invaded, oppressed, and stifled with a great weight. Now it is a thing manifest of itself, that they who seem to themselves to be burthened with the whole load of the commonweal, are prone to be seditious; and that they are affected with change, who are distasted at the present state of things.

10. Another noxious disease of the mind is theirs, who having little employment, want honour and dignity. All men naturally strive for honour and preferment; but chiefly they, who are least troubled with caring for necessary things. For these men are invited by their vacancy, sometimes to disputation among themselves concerning the commonweal, sometimes to an easy reading of histories, politics, orations, poems, and other pleasant books; and it happens that hence they think themselves sufficiently furnished both with wit and learning, to administer matters of the greatest consequence. Now because all men are not what they appear to themselves; and if they were, yet all (by reason of the multitude) could not be received to public offices; it is necessary that many must be passed by. These therefore conceiving themselves affronted, can desire nothing more, partly out of envy to those who were preferred before them, partly out of hope to overwhelm them, than ill-success to the public consultations. And therefore it is no marvel, if with greedy appetites they seek for occasions of innovations.

11. The hope of overcoming is also to be numbered among other seditious inclinations. For let there be as many men as you will, infected with opinions repugnant to peace and civil government; let there be as many as there can, never so much wounded and torn with affronts and calumnies by them who are in authority; yet if there be no hope of having the better of them, or it appear not sufficient, there will no sedition follow; every man will dissemble his thoughts, and rather content himself with the present burthen than hazard a heavier weight. There are four things necessarily requisite to this hope. Numbers, instruments, mutual trust, and commanders. To resist public magistrates without a great number, is not sedition, but desperation. By instruments of war, I mean all manner of arms, munition, and other necessary provision: without which number can do nothing. Nor arms neither, without mutual trust. Nor all these, without union under some commander, whom of their own accord they are content to obey; not as being engaged by their submission to his command; (for we have already in this very chapter, supposed these kind of men not to understand being obliged beyond that which seems right and good in their own eyes); but for some opinion they have of his virtue, or military skill, or resemblance of humours. If these four be near at hand to men grieved with the present state, and measuring the justice of their actions by their own judgments; there will be nothing wanting to sedition and confusion of the realm, but one to stir up and quicken them.

12. Sallust’s character of Cataline, than whom there never was a greater artist in raising seditions, is this: that he had great eloquence, and little wisdom. He separates wisdom from eloquence; attributing this as necessary to a man born for commotions; adjudging that as an instructress of peace and quietness. Now eloquence is twofold. The one is an elegant and clear expression of the conceptions of the mind; and riseth partly from the contemplation of the things themselves, partly from an understanding of words taken in their own proper and definite signification. The other is a commotion of the passions of the mind, such as are hope, fear, anger, pity; and derives from a metaphorical use of words fitted to the passions. That forms a speech from true principles; this from opinions already received, what nature soever they are of. The art of that is logic, of this rhetoric; the end of that is truth, of this victory. Each hath its use; that in deliberations, this in exhortations; for that is never disjoined from wisdom, but this almost ever. But that this kind of powerful eloquence, separated from the true knowledge of things, that is to say, from wisdom, is the true character of them who solicit and stir up the people to innovations, may easily be gathered out of the work itself which they have to do. For they could not poison the people with those absurd opinions contrary to peace and civil society, unless they held them themselves; which sure is an ignorance greater than can well befall any wise man. For he that knows not whence the laws derive their power, which are the rules of just and unjust, honest and dishonest, good and evil; what makes and preserves peace among men, what destroys it; what is his, and what another’s; lastly, what he would have done to himself, that he may do the like to others: is surely to be accounted but meanly wise. But that they can turn their auditors out of fools into madmen; that they can make things to them who are ill-affected, seem worse, to them who are well-affected, seem evil; that they can enlarge their hopes, lessen their dangers beyond reason: this they have from that sort of eloquence, not which explains things as they are, but from that other, which by moving their minds, makes all things to appear to be such as they in their minds, prepared before, had already conceived them.

13. Many men, who are themselves very well affected to civil society, do through want of knowledge co-operate to the disposing of subjects’ minds to sedition, whilst they teach young men a doctrine conformable to the said opinions in their schools, and all the people in their pulpits. Now they who desire to bring this disposition into act, place their whole endeavour in this: first, that they may join the ill-affected together into faction and conspiracy; next, that themselves may have the greatest stroke in the faction. They gather them into faction, while they make themselves the relators and interpreters of the counsels and actions of single men, and nominate the persons and places to assemble and deliberate of such things whereby the present government may be reformed, according as it shall seem best to their interests. Now to the end that they themselves may have the chief rule in the faction, the faction must be kept in a faction; that is to say, they must have their secret meetings apart with a few, where they may order what shall afterward be propounded in a general meeting, and by whom, and on what subject, and in what order each of them shall speak, and how they may draw the powerfullest and most popular men of the faction to their side. And thus when they have gotten a faction big enough, in which they may rule by their eloquence, they move it to take upon it the managing of affairs. And thus they sometimes oppress the commonwealth, namely, where there is no other faction to oppose them; but for the most part they rend it, and introduce a civil war. For folly and eloquence concur in the subversion of government, in the same manner (as the fable hath it) as heretofore the daughters of Pelias, king of Thessaly, conspired with Medea against their father. They going to restore the decrepit old man to his youth again, by the counsel of Medea they cut him into pieces, and set him in the fire to boil; in vain expecting when he would live again. So the common people, through their folly, like the daughters of Pelias, desiring to renew the ancient government, being drawn away by the eloquence of ambitious men, as it were by the witchcraft of Medea; divided into faction they consume it rather by those flames, than they reform it.

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